Want to teach an online course? Brush up on your copyright law first

Do you want to teach an online course? Have you ever created, or thought about creating, a massive open online course (also referred to as a “MOOC”)? Ever wonder about the copyright issues involved in doing this? The attention being paid to MOOCs and the sudden interest in global online education has created remarkable new situations for faculty, administrators and librarians. One area of both uncertainty and opportunity is copyright, especially because traditional copyright exceptions do not seem to apply comfortably in the MOOC environment.

Join the Copyright Education Subcommittee of the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy for a new series of presentations intended to educate users about copyright and encourage a discussion about a balanced approach to copyright law.

The subcommittee will host the free webinar “What a Difference a MOOC Makes: Copyright Management for Online Courses,” on February 6, 2014, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Eastern time (11am Pacific time). This webinar will examine how institutions need to think about copyright compliance for online teaching, what level of guidance for teaching faculty is appropriate, and what kinds of services may be needed to support the MOOC phenomenon.

The webinar will be hosted by Kevin Smith, Duke University’s first Scholarly Communications Officer. Smith’s teaches and advises faculty, administrators and students about copyright, intellectual property licensing and scholarly publishing. The Scholarly Communications Officer is both a librarian and an attorney experienced in copyright and technology law.

Smith holds a Masters of Library Science from Kent State University and has worked as an academic librarian in both liberal arts colleges and specialized libraries. His strong interest in copyright law began in library school and he received a law degree from Capital University in 2005. Before moving to Duke in 2006, Kevin served as the Director of the Pilgrim Library at Defiance College in Ohio, where he also taught Constitutional Law. He is admitted to the bar in Ohio and North Carolina.